Early corn and soybean yields for Montgomery County farmer David Virgin were “surprisingly good” shortly after he started harvest about a month and a half ago. His concern then was whether the early good news would prevail throughout harvest. Monday he told HAT it has.
Fifty-nine was my low and I had one field that went sixty-nine, and the majority of my beans came in around 62-65.”
The yield report has Virgin very happy about the 2013 crop year. Soybean quality this year has been widely varied.
“You know we struggled with size. We had buck shot and lima beans and the same old scenario of if we could sit and wait and cut them when the timing was right it would be a lot easier. But we got through them. Moisture-wise we got down to 9 to 10 percent for a couple of days. We binned those beans and then when we got to the 15’s and 14’s later on we did some on-farm blending and got them right to town.”
Virgin has about 700 acres of corn yet to be harvested and the lowest moisture level they reached was about 19 percent, “and that’s ok. The majority that we’ve done in the last week and half to two weeks has been 20-22, so that’s fine. We’re just drying and blending.”
His yields in the Crawfordsville area were “on the low side 195, and we have hit one field up to 235 dry, so we’re everywhere in between right now. Test weight has been good. Quality of corn has been good. We had a little trouble early on drying because I do believe that corn prematurely died, so that kind of changed the physiological aspect of the corn. So it was a little tougher to dry.”
If rains hold off he and his neighbors in west-central Indiana can wrap up corn harvest in about the next week. Cover crops have been planted too and you can hear more about that in the HAT field update:Virgin 11-4 update